Yay! You made a sale. But what if it didn’t need to end there?
What if you could take that one sale and make it even more profitable while giving your audience or client even more value?
This is what upselling is all about! In today’s post, we’re going to walk through the step-by-step process of how to add an upsell and share some ideas for upsells you could include in your marketing funnel.
What is an Upsell?
Before we talk about the “how” we should probably break down the “what.” So before we get in the nitty gritty, let’s talk about what exactly is an upsell?
Upselling is the process of increasing the profitability of your sale.
There are a few ways you can upsell, such as:
- Offering an additional relevant product or service
- Enticing the buyer to purchase a more expensive option
- Selling an add-on, upgrade, warranty, etc
The reason upselling is such a powerful strategy is because it happens when someone is already in a buying process and has already made the mental “yes” to purchase from you. Once this happens, you then offer something that is relevant and valuable to increase the profitability of your total sale. This benefits both the buyer AND the seller.
Believe it or not, you’ve been upsold many times in your life.
Take the good ole “would you like to supersize your meal” offer. Or the common “would you like fries with that?”.
Whether you’re in the McDonald’s drive-thru or dining at your local restaurant, odds are you’ve been upsold. Those sneaky sweet potatoes fries that you can swap out instead of the regular ones? UPSELL.
So now that we’re all craving some french fries, let’s talk about the steps you can take to start upselling in your business (no fries necessary).
List Out Your Current Offerings
First, you’ll want to make a list of all of your current products or services. (I also recommend thinking through this every time you go to launch a new product or service!)
While you can certainly create multiple upsells, to keep it simple let’s start with one. Choose your most popular offering – this will be a great way to test upselling in your business.
For example, our #1 service for our Pete + Jordan business is our Facebook Ads Course. Our first upsell that we added was for new students who purchase that course. I’ll share more on that in a minute!
But for now, think about which offer you want to start with. What makes the most sense for your audience? Which is the most popular? Most profitable already? Let’s start with that one!
How Can You Add More Value to that Offer?
Once you’ve decided on the product or service that you want to add an upsell to, it’s time to brainstorm how you can add more value to that offer.
Remember: the goal here is to make each sale more profitable because you’re providing more value to the buyer.
Let’s take that restaurant example again. Fries are an easy upsell because they’re delicious and make an easy side for most meals. They add value to your taste buds and cravings (value for you) and add more money to your total bill (value for the restaurant and server).
But what if you ordered a burger and they asked if you wanted to add a side of salmon? That seems a little odder, doesn’t it? Odds are, you probably wouldn’t want to add another full, random meal to your burger.
So now think back to your business and offer.
What could you offer in addition to this to create more value and a higher sale?
- Could you bundle another product?
- Could you offer templates or done-for-you options?
- Could you offer a coaching call in addition to your course sale?
- Could you offer an album in addition to a standard wedding photography package?
- Could you offer an SEO audit in addition to your website design service?
There are SO many options here!
I’d also highly recommend looking through the current assets you already have and seeing if there’s a way to use them in an upsell funnel before you start from scratch.
As an example in our own business, when someone joins our Happily Ever Growth Facebook Ads program, they’re offered to add on our Advanced Strategies mini-course for $100 off right after they make that first purchase. They’re already in the mindset of saying yes to learning Facebook ads, and this deal often encourages people to add that second mini-course to their purchase.
So what could you add to your offer that will add value to your buyer and result in a larger purchase?
Add Your Upsell to Post-Purchase Funnel
Now that you know what you want to add as your upsell, let’s talk about how to do that!
In order for this to work the right way, you want to make the upsell offer after you’ve gotten them to say “yes” to purchasing the original offer.
Like I mentioned above, we offer a relevant mini-course on the thank you page (post-purchase) when someone buys our Facebook ads course.
So how you make that first purchase will determine how you’ll need to introduce the upsell offer.
Although I won’t be able to share every example under the sun in this blog, I want to share a few examples to hopefully spark some ideas and make the tech feel less overwhelming. But if you have questions on your specific platform or tool, be sure to leave a comment below – I’d be happy to help if possible!
Here are a few examples of how to add upsells to your marketing funnels:
- If you sell a course on Teachable*, upsell an additional course on the Thank You page. Teachable makes this SUPER simple to convert the standard thank you page to an upsell offer
- Bonus Teachable tip: If you don’t want to upsell another course but let’s say additional coaching or templates, you can create a course with that name (ex: VIP Coaching Calls) and upsell that ‘product’ aka course. Then just make sure to include instructions in that upsell course on how to access those course or share the links to schedule or join them
- If you use Clickfunnels to sell products, they have an easy “one-click upsell” option you can use a template for to add into your funnels
- If you use Shopify to sell products, there are tons of apps within their shopping platform to upsell or cross-sell products
- If you sell ANY service or product, you can redirect the purchase submission to a custom “thank you page.” Simply create a Thank You page on your website and include a relevant call to action to add on an additional product or service
- Bonus tip: Use a tool like Deadline Funnel to create a sense of urgency with your offer
- If you don’t want to upsell right away, you could also include “upsell” offers in your post-purchase nurture sequences. For example, a wedding photographer could include a call to action to add an album to a package throughout their nurture sequence after someone books.
As you can see, there are a lot of ways to make upselling work in your business! The tech part really depends on the tools and systems you’re already using, but the good news is that most of the time, you can upsell with what you’re already using to sell in the first place!
Tips for Upselling
If you’re going to offer upsells, we may as well try to make the most of it right? So how do we get more people to say “yes” to your upsell offer?
Here are some quick tips to think through when creating your upsell offers:
#1 – Offer Something Relevant + Valuable as an Upsell
One of the biggest mistakes I see people make with upsells is offering something that doesn’t make sense to your buyer. You want to make sure the offer is both relevant and valuable, depending on what they were purchasing in the first place.
#2 – Include a Special Offer or Discount for the Upsell
If they can purchase this product or service at another time for the same investment, then they won’t have any reason to take action NOW (unless they’re just super excited). You can encourage them to take action and add the upsell to their purchase by offering an exclusive discount or offer that can only be used at that moment.
An example of this is our Teachable course above. They can purchase our Advanced Strategies course at any time for $197, but on the post-purchase page of our Happily Ever Growth page only they can save $100 and get that mini-course for only $97! This makes a lot of people want to buy it right away, which is a win for us – and we know that Advanced course will help make what they learn in HEG even better, which is a win for them! #winwin
#3 – Make the Upsell Offer Time-Sensitive
This can work in tandem with discounts or with full-price offers that aren’t available elsewhere. If you offer something that is only available for a limited time, it’s a great motivator to take action now.
As an example in our own business, we have a limited-time offer within 24 hours of watching our Facebook ads webinar. If you join within those first 24 hours, we give you access to an additional mini-course for free – and that course isn’t available at all afterward. This technically isn’t an upsell for our example because it doesn’t add to the total price, but you get the point: it gets people to take action quickly!
#4 – Make the Upsell Offer Limited
Limiting the quantity of an upsell is another great way to inspire action. For example, maybe you’re offering VIP coaching calls for your course as an upsell, but for your own sanity let’s say you limit them to only the first 10 people who join. This would encourage people who are on the fence to want to buy sooner and have access to grab those extra coaching calls!
#5 – Automate Your Upsell Offer
Last but certainly not least, if you’re going to include an offer in your sales funnel, please please please make sure it’s automated and part of your system. You should NOT need to upsell manually (unless this is a personal sales call). Upselling becomes a lot easier when it’s built right into your sales process!
Well, there you have it, friends! As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts. What upsells are you brainstorming or thinking of adding to your business? Let me know in the comments below!
*Disclaimer: This post includes affiliate links and I would love it if you decided to use them. Affiliate links + referrals programs help educators like me to fund the free content that we provide on our blogs at no additional cost to you.
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